Global DNS Resolution Balancing: Anycast DNS for humans

TL;DR

• Global DNS Resolution Balancing (GDRB) is DNScale’s way of keeping every DNS query close to home, without manual traffic steering.
• GDRB blends Anycast addressing, smart BGP routing, and resolver-aware policies so each request lands on the healthiest, closest Point of Presence (POP).
• Two Anycast networks make it happen today: AS44794 serves our EU footprint, while AS62406 spans the global edge.
• Everyone benefits: end users enjoy faster responses, and ops teams gain automatic failover plus clear controls when they need them.

Why GDRB matters

Most people experience DNS as fire-and-forget lookup before a website loads or an API call completes. Behind the scenes, those lookups can wander across continents if a provider relies on a single location. GDRB keeps DNS traffic local by default, which means:

1. Closest POP, lowest latency – Anycast advertises the same addresses from every DNScale POP, so BGP automatically sends each resolver to the nearest site and trims the round-trip time for every lookup.
2. Built-in DDoS dilution – When attackers flood an Anycast IP, the blast is divided across all active POPs; each absorbs only a slice while local scrubbing keeps legitimate queries flowing.
3. Better last-mile experience – Because our POPs sit close to major IXPs and carrier aggregation points, Anycast keeps DNS answers inside the same metro as the end user, smoothing performance for the rest of their session.

If you are non-technical, think of it as giving every region its own express lane for DNS questions. If you are technical, it is a control plane that keeps authoritative answers consistent while letting BGP steer resolvers toward the lowest latency path.

New to anycast? If you want to understand how anycast networking and BGP routing work before diving into DNScale's implementation, start with What is an Anycast DNS Network?.

Anycast, BGP, and resolvers working in concert

Anycast networking announces the same IP prefix from every DNScale POP. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) then advertises those prefixes across our upstream carriers so the wider Internet knows where to reach us. When a resolver looks up one of your zones:

1. BGP chooses the shortest path to whichever POP has the lowest cost from that resolver’s ASN.
2. Health signals shape reachability; unhealthy POPs withdraw their route so queries instantly shift elsewhere.
3. Resolver-friendly responses keep TTLs steady so caches remain coherent even while traffic shifts between POPs.

Because Anycast happens before the DNS packet hits our edge, we avoid the “one big origin” bottleneck that classic Unicast load balancers face. If a POP or upstream carrier degrades, BGP naturally tilts traffic to the next-best location without needing application-layer intervention.

Meet AS44794 and AS62406

• AS44794 – Dedicated to our European presence. We announce Anycast /24s from Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Milano, Stockholm, Warsaw and other EU POPs through this ASN so traffic bound for EU domains stays inside regional carriers whenever possible.
• AS62406 – Covers our global network footprint. POPs in North America, APAC, and other regions advertise the same prefixes from this ASN, giving resolvers outside the EU a nearby answering point.

By splitting the network this way we can uphold jurisdictional promises while still offering a single-pane-of-glass experience. Customers that need EU-only answering simply delegate to the AS44794 addresses; everyone else benefits from the wider AS62406 coverage without changing integrations.

Inside DNScale’s GDRB pipeline

1. Ingress sensing – POPs continuously export telemetry (latency percentiles, NXDOMAIN rate, packet loss) into our regional control plane.
2. Policy engine – Performance-defined rules are evaluated against that telemetry to decide whether a POP should keep serving a given zone.
3. Route signalling – Approved POPs continue advertising the shared Anycast prefixes. If a POP is throttled, we update its BGP announcement—either withdrawing the route or lowering its preference—so upstream networks shift queries elsewhere.
4. Authoritative response – Our authoritative nameservers remain synchronized across POPs, ensuring each site returns the same records, DNSSEC signatures, and policy-driven answers.
5. Feedback loop – Metrics and audit data feed back into observability and the dashboard so teams can correlate routing changes with configuration updates.

What customers experience

• Latency parity worldwide – Recursive resolvers usually stay within one or two network hops of a DNScale POP, keeping round trips short.
• Self-healing DNS – Regional incidents (fiber cuts, DDoS spikes) simply drain queries toward healthy POPs because unhealthy sites withdraw from BGP announcements automatically.
• Compliance-aware routing – Need EU-only answering? Define it in policy for the zone and the control plane limits advertisements to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and other EU POPs.

How to plug into GDRB today

1. Point NS records to DNScale Anycast addresses – Once your registrar delegates to us, every recursive resolver reaches the closest POP automatically.
2. Set sensible TTLs – Start with 60–300 seconds. Shorter TTLs let you roll over records faster, but remember that GDRB already handles path diversity.
3. Leverage regional policies – Use the dashboard or API to pin traffic to required jurisdictions.

Where we are headed

We continue to add POP capacity, layer in per-record health probes, and expose latency SLOs directly in the API. If you want early access or have a compliance-driven routing need, reach us at info@dnscale.eu and keep an eye on the Learning section of dnscale.eu.

Global DNS Resolution Balancing keeps DNS traffic fast, sovereign, and observable, so your applications stay available regardless of where the next query originates.